Geograft Textures Disappear After Merging With Main Mesh (Tested With BSDF Cycles Only Material Option)

[Jasper29]

After merging geografts with main mesh, the textures for the geografts disappear/turns black. I tried with Genesis 8 male and

female, using Dicktator and Golden Palace. I read what you guys were saying about editing Prune Node Trees etc, and not using UV

nodes, so I set them up accordingly to issue 1337, but still didn’t work for me. I assume this isn’t really a bug and is working as

intended since the recent work being done to them, but I’m was wondering if there’s something I’m missing here? Is there a new

overall workflow when dealing with materials now everytime we merge geografts? NOTE: I’m using BSDF Cycles material option if it

helps.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

daz studio 4.21.0.5, blender 3.4.1, diffeomorphic 1.7.0.1366

I can confirm the issue, it seems the plugin doesn’t import anymore the geograft uvs, it only imports the shell uvs. For example for golden palace it doesn’t import the “default uvs“ map that’s used for the geograft in daz studio.

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note for @Thomas. In reference to #1337 the geograft uv map should be the active one in blender, and the shell uv map(s) as secondary. When merging geografts there are two options: if we merge and fix uvs then “default uvs“ will be merged to the g8f active uv map and mapped with the texture coordinate node, otherwise it will become a secondary map mapped with the uv map node. Let me know if something is not clear.

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[Thomas Larsson]

Fixed in last commit. The plugin only kept the active uv map if there is a texture coordinate node, which we recently got rid of. Now it also keeps the active map if unlinked textures are found. The last commit also contains some cosmetics for the uv map nodes.

[Jasper29]

Thanks guys, awesome as usual!

[Jasper29]

Just tried with the latest commit Thomas, and it does bring the UVs over, but it still does not automatically merge them when merging

the geografts like it used to. Is this intended? You can still merge them by either changing the geograft UV name to the base mesh UV

before merging, or merge them first and then use the merge UVs button, but I was wondering if this is how it’s suppose to be now.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

bug. Commit a580ece works fine if we merge geografts with merge and fix uvs. But, if we don’t merge and fix uvs then we need to address the “deafult uvs“ for the golden palace materials, since in this case “default uvs“ is not merged with the active uv map thus can’t be addressed with texture coordinate.

This is also reported in #1337. Again let me know if something is not clear.

The uv map node is only needed if there’s multiple uv maps and we want to reference any but the active one. The active one is referenced by default for textures of via the texture coordinate uv output. Note that the user can change the active uv map on the uv maps list, so it is his/her responsibility to set it back.

And I still believe that grouping textures, if possible, would benefit over the current approach.

note. Or we may remove the merge and fix uvs as options and always do it when we merge geografts, since this is also required to stack shells anyway. See #1316.

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[Jasper29]

I 100% agree with @Alessandro. I think it would streamline the process because typically you’d want UVs automatically merged when dealing with geografts anyway. Maybe have an option in ‘Global Settings’ to uncheck if you don’t want UVs auto merged, but have it on by default?

[AnonymousBlender]

Personally, I like having separate UV’s, and I never merge them. Especially for geografts like Golden Palace. It has multiple materials that after being merged don’t use the Golden Palace diffuse maps for the “Torso”, and “Torso-Back” materials. This makes it very easy to just specify the UV set within the material using the UV Map node. There are similar things that happen with the Dicktator geograft. In my experience, both of these grafts require a fair bit of finagling after importing, specifically with the materials. Mind you this is all using “Single Principled”, I tend to keep my material node setups as simple as possible since it can affect render times, or at least it used to.

So if there were to be any change I definitely would prefer it to be an option and not automatic. Just my $0.02.

[Alessandro Padovani]

The shell uv map would not be merged so you can still use it for single principled. Only the active uv maps aka base layers aka geograft uv map would be merged.

[jeroen b]

I 100% agree with William Hurst, merging UV maps should always remain optional. Geograft materials often contain ugly inaccuracies that are not that difficult to fix, but will become a PITA when UV’s are merged automatically.

[Alessandro Padovani]

How exactly merging the active uv maps becomes a PITA can you do an example please ? The active uv maps are anyway supposed to be merged if we merge the geometries. Again, the shell uv map would not be merged so you can use it as before to manually fix the shell materials.

[AnonymousBlender]

I’d like an example as well just to clear up my own ignorance on the subject. But If I follow correctly, and I’m fairly certain I do. What Alessandro said makes sense as those base mesh UV’s aren't typically driving the actual materials in Daz anyway. Typically it's done with the shell for ease of blending textures.

I hate shells, there I said it. Sorry, not sorry. 🤣

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[jeroen b]

I apologize for misinterpreting William’s comment, after testing the latest version I see no different behaviour as before. The UV’s are still available on the characters mesh after merging geocrafts and so can be used for any modification in the textures that the user would like to make.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

commit c7541d4.

@Thomas I’m not sure why you didn’t fix this yet. The bug and solution are reported above if we don’t merge uvs. I may suppose that if the user doesn’t merge and fix uvs then it is his responsibility to deal with it. In this case we can mark as resolved let us know please.

[Thomas Larsson]

I don’t like to remove the merge uv option, even if I right now cannot think of a case where you don’t want to merge the background UVs. Having the right default should be enough, and you could always merge the UVs manually afterwards. In the last commit a warning is issued if unmerged background UV layers are found.

[Thomas Larsson]

Alessandro, sorry, I misunderstood. Now uvmap nodes are generated when they are needed, which I think is:

1. Merge uv layers is disabled and the render layer names differ.
2. Geometry nodes everywhere.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

Ok, if you don’t merge uvs then you have to check that the correct uv map is used when you merge geografts. That the plugin actually doesn’t thus the bug. In the example above the “default uvs” for golden palace is not connected in the geograft materials since it’s the active uv. But it must be connected after merging geografts because, if we don’t merge uvs too, then it is no more the active uv.

steps:

1. import G8F with golden palace
2. merge geografts without merging uvs

So again, please let us know if this is the intended behavior and the user has to take care of this himself, so I’ll mark as resolved.

edit. Ok I got your second reply going to check the new commit.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit cc6385c works great thank you for the fix.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Duplicate of #1365.